What are problems?

When a service has vulnerabilities, incidents can occur. Problems are the cause (or potential cause) of those incidents. Problems' relationship with incidents is one of cause and effect. Problems are the cause; incidents are the effect. They’re raised in response to a significant incident, smaller similar ones, or even when an incident hasn’t occurred yet (for example, you may find a flaw in your service that may result in an incident if not fixed).

Fixing an incident means to temporarily restore an impacted service. This may not be a permanent resolution, as the underlying cause hasn’t been fixed. Resolving a problem is a longer-term resolution, which may involve: investigating the incident, analyzing the situation, and developing a workaround.